FFXIV Is Hurting Its Veteran Players (and here's why)

[@Twitchy_McExorcism]

"Criticizing games isn't about trying to ruin them." Well said, especially considering it was the response to initial criticism that _made_ FFXIV a success. Personally, I've been having a better time bobbing and weaving as a monk than I ever did casting two or three spells while rooted in place as a black mage. I'm not bending over backwards to push all the buttons and maximize my damage output, but I do try to make the most of each form and the timing of their special attacks.

[@Riku-Leela]

Its interesting as i've just started playing Black Mage alot now because Summoner has become a braindead job since EW, its good there's (mostly) something for everyone

[@MrLightlike78]

One that surprised me as a dancer main was just how fun ninja is! I enjoy the class fantasy of blm but it just isn't for me. I need to be able to run and gun as it were and my DMG on blm suuuuuucckkkkkss. That's ok though like chairs trying to say- there's so many other jobs that I enjoy that it's not a huge deal.

[@IKIGAIofficial]

I love being BLM just because once i dodge the crazy movement mechanics perfectly everyone gives me commendations

[@arielcerecer142]

@@IKIGAIofficial true! Specially if you make a good use of between the lines and aetheric manipulation. Same with rdm and displacement

[@kokayinewsome9308]

It is well said. I have gripes about SMN and MCH but as a whole I love FF14. I had a lot of run-ins with trolls for a long time, but by EW, I don't see them anymore. Which begs the question? Who's the bigger asshole? That guy who accused Mr. Incredible of ruining her suicide in Incredibles 1? Or troll who call everyone a "casual" if they don't play the content they like?

[@shiki0836]

Man the Kaiten Removal really sent chair to a really dark place

[@SupremeDouchebaggery]

I wouldn't blame him. I'm still on copium about it.

[@blueray222]

Because the SAM mains know and understand what it added to the job on a moment to moment basis, they understand how hollow it feels to not have that one little skill that carried more weight than the braindead 'lol get over it' idiots ever realized.

[@Isac01]

Rightfully so. The change is dogshit. I kept kaiten on my screen as a reminder of what they took from us.

[@MastatmastaT]

I agree with him though. I decided to pick up sam for this savage tier, and after this change it just feels like donkey. I still do the weaving in and out in dungeons or maps to line up my AOEs. It was fun to do that. Why was it taken away from me? I don't get it.

[@StealthMaster5k]

Some modder ported Chitens animation to Minds Eye and ive been popping Minds before Iaji everytime, my Kaiten is not lost

[@pharaohthutmosis7803]

I wept for Kaiten, but i could never imagine how wrong it feels to have tenka goken being made into a circle.

[@yanipheonu]

The Kaiten removal thing really overshadowed the other ways the Job got messed with. Sure I miss Kaiten, but I hate having to spam Shinten so much more. It's clunky and isn't at all how the move was designed to be used. It's like they *forgot* Kenki exists when they were removing a spender.

[@Zuhri69]

@@yanipheonu fuck, are we going back to shinten spam meta? That’s the worst part of 4.0 SAM

[@lynndylan4674]

Sch mains have been asking SE to do something with fairy gauge. You know what they did? They removed one of the two gauge spending abilities we have. Now my fairy is gauge is capped for the most part.

[@rekijitsu89]

The animation even looks sloppy - they made it a circle but the animation doesn't *suggest* it would be a circle when using it. Your body doesn't spin it just... swings forward and a circle goes around your feet. It's lazy.

[@mimikyoo]

Even worse is tenka is a loss on 2 now. They really did sam dirty

[@Coaltergeist]

Do you know how elated I was when I realized I could squeeze a third Fell Cleave into a Berserk window during Heavensward? Do you know how cool I thought it was that you could extend the duration of Miasma 2 using Contagion, even though Miasma 2 wasn't in Tri Disaster and didn't affect Fester damage? Little things like that. I miss those feelings

[@Toanon]

In the three hour Tim Rogers review that is Misshapen Chair's "villain arc" I'd say that this is "The Point" segment of the video

[@kaidynj2535]

i got to say i like your content for how real it is, i love the ffxiv community but i feel like a lot of people ignore these concepts and its refreshing to hear someone else say it.

[@Trinimmortal]

The samurai changes piss me off cuz imo, samurai was one of if not THE best designed job in the game in SB and SHB. Everything felt super satisfying and engaging and getting massive numbers on midare was always a guaranteed dopamine rush. Then endwalker comes along and it took away Seigan, which made me sad since Seigan added to the kenki management AND made third eye satisfying, but I lived with it cuz we got meikyo/tsubame charges and ogi namikiri... fine. I'll live with it. At least we still had kaiten and big numbers... Then 6.1 takes all of that away. I still enjoy samurai cuz I'm a big weeb but it feels like a straight downgrade. NONE of the changes were wanted or necessary. After our buffs shortly following the launch, I thought samurai was in a good spot and they coulda left it alone for the rest of the expansion, but they decided to screw everything up for bs reasons. Genuinely such a garbage change that makes me legitimately wonder if any of them actually play samurai. They'll remove something so integral to the feel of a job like kaiten, but leave freecure in the game.

[@TheLordMagmar]

The reasons they changed Kaiten and the autocrit thing was to smooth out variance (which crit kaiten vs non-crit non-kaiten Iajutsu did in fact have huge variance, even crit vs non-crit kaiten iajutsu had massive variance because of how high the damage was). The reasons they stated were in fact real things, and people misunderstand the action bloat thing. It is not button bloat that they were reducing, but double-weaving/weaving requirements via actions that have no meaningful gameplay. All of this is extremely stupid for them to do, but their reasoning is not bs. It's a garbage change, but it isn't for bs reasons.

[@kreyton3312]

Trinimmortal guy?

[@Zayindjejfj]

@@TheLordMagmar one hundred percent it's a stupid reason. It is the prime example of pure bullshit. "We want to design sam and expand it more but Kaiten restricts some of that for 7.0" THEN WAIT FOR THE NEXT EXPANSION. You don't tear something out and say "we'll rework the rest to be more fun and coherent in a couple of years..." that's fucking stupid. And it's fucking lazy. Just wait until the next expansion. All you did was leave a gaping hole in a job that had great design. "It's difficult to balance around the crit stat and we saw huge variance." Who... gives... a flying fuck. Balance that shit in 7.0 when you're redesigning some things. Again. WAIT UNTIL 7.0 DON'T FUCK UP SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE EXPANSION. And fuck off with the "crit variance." That's the point of crit rng. It's not anybody's fault that someone didn't score a crit. And even if you're so worried about the crit... Just make Kaiten boost potency and add in crit and adjust the potency of the iajutsu. Fuck me man, you don't even need to remove Kaiten. Just change what it does and adjust potency numbers to compensate. None of this shit makes sense. It's stupid. It's lazy. It's pathetic.

[@yanipheonu]

The changes are straight up antithetical to the Job as it played for years (powering up your biggest moves for max damage), and there seems to have been little attention paid to how such a major change would mess with Kenki management and spamming Shinten 🤢. They didn't even check the synergy with other party members Crit buffs apparently. How is anyone looking at a rotation where it's just "weave in a shitload of Shinten" and saying "yes this is how Samurai should play, the same exact stabbing animation on repeat between GCDs, this is fine" Was this rushed? Did someone just forget to check these things? It just raises too many questions.

[@Jackeh47]

@@TheLordMagmar i honestly don't see this kind of damage variance as an issue. it's just the nature of a job with few high damaging abilities. take dancer or mch. should they always crit standard/technical step and drill/air anchor? to me, this kind of drastic change to address that issue is tone deaf. and they didn't even affect the action bloat with these changes.

[@25xxfrostxx]

As a person who is satisfied with being "good enough" that has no intention of mastering a class beyond my own comfort level and no intention of touching higher end content, I have a clear sense of what content is "for me" and what isn't. I have no business in an ultimate or even in most extremes because my personal sense of what "feels good" and what would push me to a point where a class feels more like work than play creates a ceiling for me. No, the devs should not tailor content to be for everyone, nor should they alter jobs just to make them potato friendly. People just have to accept that unless you, the player, are going to go above and beyond, you have to accept that not everything is going to work for you. Job wise, I think of Ninja. The way the job handles, it can be very labor intensive and cumbersome to the masses, thus you don't see as many of them as other jobs running around. That doesn't mean that they need to dumb it down so more normies can handle it. It's turned itself into its own niche and the people that do play it, and well, adore the job. They don't love it because of what it isn't or what it theoretically could be, they love it because of what it is. It really is a matter of knowing your place and that place isn't everywhere you feel like being.

[@hagetsuuu]

true!

[@skryonix357]

The only problem with this argument is essentially you’re saying there’s no room for improvement on the jobs. Change is necessary, just not in the way that it’s been going.

[@maxmustermann3938]

The change that Ninja needs is a netcode fix.

[@axelwolf2115]

@@maxmustermann3938 I would love to see that happening, Job changes: NETCODE is no longer trash :D one can only dream our indie devs can do it :')

[@25xxfrostxx]

@@skryonix357 What constitutes improvement is often subjective. According to the devs, the kaiten removal was an improvement. I'm certainly not saying that nothing should be changed ever, but the reasons should never be someone's idea of accessibility.

[@valizeth4073]

This is exactly what ive been saying since the later patches of stormblood where the tank jobs (specifically warrior in this case) was simplified rather massively. Then it happened again in shadowbringers, and once again, another time in endwalker. By simplifying the combat in a game, and not increasing the overall difficulty of mechanics, what it essentially does is just dumb down the game. And it's frustrating, stormblood was by far the best expansion in terms of combat in my opinion because it had the best of both worlds, it still really felt like the good old heavensward jobs, but the gauges and tweaks made the jobs more fun to play. Really shameful they ruined it.

[@-rakoo-amv454]

Yes yes yes aaand yes.

[@penultimania4295]

HW was the best for me but i would settle on SB as middle ground, with the added caveat of not obliterating aggro.

[@Brainfly-]

To this day I'm still sad about Bard's procs no longer being linked to the DOTs. It rewarded keeping them up, especially on multiple targets, where you'd go absolutely nuts.

[@rhael42]

I'm still sad about Bard's pocs not being linked to dot _crits._ It rewarded knowing when to clip them early and felt substantially better than even ShB bard

[@Brainfly-]

@Gud Phrog It was mainly multi-target situations where I really missed my dot procs. And now we also never get double procs anymore. Idk, to me it just doesn't feel as good anymore 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@The_Remage]

@ As an ex-fire mage main that played since Vanilla: The crits were the best thing! Biggest numbers and biggest raid damage by miles (until they made Warlock more viable in TBC onwards and slowly dumbed it down too much - and yet, it was 1st or 2nd when it came to that) It worked in wow because it used a different damage system entirely

[@TKBadMoon]

@Gud Phrog In dungeons is where you got to become a machine gun bard, who cares if you have to throw dots up for a few seconds to unlock literal godlike aoe dps? Also who cares if it forces them into max crit builds? Build variety in this game is a meme, if it isn't max crit, you just have another BiS. What actual gameplay changes come from them not having to max crit? You slot some DH materia now? Why does this matter? If anything you LOSE flavor from them not being an all crit focus class. The job is still cool, but it lost nearly a decade of flavor, for what? What identity was gained for this loss of identity? It is now more static and less reactive. It's DoTs now feel completely tacked on. They still dont have the dot spreader. They finally got BL stacks after they took away the entire point for BL stacks. They took away intuition/math based 2 stack PP, BL decision making, several of our more nuanced support abilities most notably Foes, a literal core mechanic to our class which was dot procs. For what? For the exact people who are getting ranted about in this video? People who think core parts of the class are "annoying"? The class is a glorified archer now lmao. 1 song is literally just a GCD decrease and another main song is a shadow of what it used to be, dots don't interact with anything, support role pulled back (almost entirely to make Dancer a thing, same thing they just did for Reaper, remove stuff from other classes to make room for their new fancy class). We could have everything we have now without sacrificing the class identity and flavor that we've done the last two expansions. We have literally turned from a reactive class into a solvable, mathematically rigid class just like everyone else. For people who will never do content where it is even remotely necessary. All dungeon dot "issues" for casuals could have been solved with a conditional dot spreader. Everything else is literally just a loss to make the job more braindead.

[@TKBadMoon]

@Gud Phrog This is revisionist history lmao. Bard was cracked in Stormblood, literally one of the best classes in the game. Bard fucking demolished every other ranged class in SB due to sheer utility, it was literally an instant lock along with NIN for an ideal party comp. LITERALLY every high end team in SB had a BRD. Mage vs Ranged was such a discussed topic that I genuinely believe you didn't play high end at all in SB and only joined in ShB, when they got kneecapped to make way for Dancer. I don't know why you just outed yourself like this. You can literally look all of this up on FFLogs RIGHT NOW lmao. Also the entire fucking point of BRD is that it's a flowing, reactive class, it doesn't "build" toward anything because it's different from the other classes and is always doing something? It had constant decision making at higher level play due to optimizing procs, potential procs more importantly, crit buff optimization, and ogcd sequencing. It has never "built" toward anything until Shadowbringers added the wet noodle that is Apex, and EW finally added something with some semblance of nuance in Blast Arrow. You literally did not play Bard before ShB and have no idea what you're talking about lmfao. You are either trolling or another one of those people that took BRD casually into dungeons or alliance raids or some shit and didn't like it, but are roleplaying someone who actually knew how to play the class and played it regularly, thinking they have some sort of logical opinion about the class. Levelled it, ran some roulettes and an EX and think that qualifies you to have an opinion on the class for some reason. Legitimately one of the people this video is talking about, fuck off and go ruin other classes with these cro-magnon takes.

[@zapper454]

The only problem I ever had with cone AoEs, was the fact that they needed a target. Not because targeting something is hard, but simply because it was annoying to occasionally just get told "Target out of range."

[@CompressionPolice]

Fun fact, if you target something at the very edge of your range with a cone AoE, you can miss your target.

[@khdayskh1314]

considering the recent change they added to settings to enable autotarget of an enemy if nothing is targeted when using a skill, you wouldn't have come across that issue anymore if we still had old goken.

[@shirouamakusa1826]

Overall, I'm fine with either a cone aoe or a circle aoe while playing WAR. One thing I will say in favor of having a cone aoe though, is that it forced me to consider mob positioning a lot more and, because your party's aoe (aside from healers) is target centric rather than centered on the tank, when I positioned mobs correctly with the cone aoe, I knew that the party would hit all the targets currently attacking me.

[@TheCrimsonFacker]

Just like to add that it also give job diversity. It is a small thing for some but damn it does it make job feel different in some aspect. Misshapen chair may not mention DRK flood of darkness. But now it is the only tank job that has to reposition itself. Heck i like the fact that cone overpower said target out of range. It Helped me out by letting when i am in range.

[@MrIrule111]

@@khdayskh1314 Know what's also funny? Blue Mage has targetless cone AoEs. The tech to use cones without a target has existed since mid/late SB, they're just changing shit for no reason now.

[@noodlegum_]

as a casual player, this is a very nice insight into what higher-end players have to deal with everytime things get a little easier for us lmao- i was one of the complainers of the straight ahead aoe's when i picked up WAR for the first time- but as time went on i actually started to prefer it and learn how to use it. you make really good points and i hope (somehow) some of the developers see this video

[@penultimania4295]

Take your little fellas and gtfo of the game. Go play genshin impact and stop ruining fun for people with your presence.

[@johnway8819]

I almost hated the Kaiten removal as much as I hated the removal of Dragoon Blue Aura, and that's a lot. Removing class identity for no reason.

[@drayman101]

Just like I miss the Monk's greased lightning rings, they're coming for all our auras!! Watch out WAR and DRK, you're probably next!!

[@coolyeh1017]

This is good feedback and a great discussion on skill ceiling and skill floors. I am sure you are well aware, but the devs do enjoy watching videos about criticism and pros and cons of their game. However, Yoshi P mentioned that most of his dev team does not speak English and that getting a translator is problematic (since their localizing team is busy, well, localizing and Yoshi P's lead localizer, Koji Fox is very busy juggling between management, The Primals, and so forth) and it is hard for them to get a translator on-demand (aka willing to work Japanese hours when most translators are overseas). Maybe having Japanese subtitles (auto mostly works) will get the message to the devs faster?

[@Kazzythings]

smol indie devs and all that

[@Aiscence]

there were 6+ years of feedback about mch's wanting charges for wildfire and rapidfir and the latency problems, result: they are the only ones without any. You shouldn't believe everything they say, they said they wouldnt spare any cost to make the game better: recruit a community manager for the english forums to transmit the messages, simple.

[@kokayinewsome9308]

All I know is everything game I critique people counter by saying the game was never intended for me. So what game is intended 36 yr old black man who likes fantasy and sci-fi and murder mystery? I like FF and Tales and Marvel and DC comics and movies. But unless I gush about Neir they tell me I wasted my time because it was for other people not me. So where is the RPG for black gamers?

[@JasperOnari]

@@kokayinewsome9308 try Guild Wars 2. Generally if people are unhappy with other MMOs they fall in love with it.

[@kokayinewsome9308]

@@JasperOnari I love FF14, and I love ninja, but other than that class the changes they do to the other classes I play sting me. SMN used to be my second fav class. Dancer and MCH are good both of them. But I have to play all 3 to do what I want. Buff allies, dots, spread dots, and quickly atk at range. I would go to Guild Wars 2. But I doubt it has the kinda anime style atks and story I love from Tales and FF games. I like limit breaks and Mystic Artes. I doubt that is in GW2.

[@impexus91]

God I miss Heavensward Scholar so much. Having half the summoners dps skills as a healer, I loved it.

[@user-un2yf7bw2n]

I miss hw rpr so much

[@SolPhantasmagoria]

@@user-un2yf7bw2n _Wait a second..._

[@penultimania4295]

God yes. Healing even dungeons was so much fun on sch back then. You actually had to heal lmao.

[@PSNMyfoot]

Yeah =( Cleric stance >2 dots > Bane was so satisfying...

[@psclly]

22:30 to 22:49 sort of hit me emotionally. I love Final Fantasy XIV, but this is indeed a massive gripe I have with it, which saddens me thinking about the future of XIV

[@Bahamoth93]

I can only agree with you. You speak to me from the soul. I hate how boring or just plain bad some jobs are became, the best example of that is the warrior. In every expansion he suffers from the adjustments. I used to be a warrior main in HW and SB and SB was already cruel with its changes. However, since SHB it's just sad, especially with the warrior but also with other jobs... and it's only getting worse

[@KalaamNozalys]

One thing I wish we had more of is content that sits somewhere between braindead easy and ultimate difficulty. Rather than having curious player have to jump into a whole new way to play the game, have content that serves a transition. Normal raiding and 24man raid kind of serves that purpose, but I feel like it's not enough

[@AkenoAkine]

That content exists it’s called Extremes

[@rhael42]

Savage and Extremes already exist.

[@KalaamNozalys]

@@rhael42 You miss the point, or you didn't elaborate enough.

[@brokenwing51]

We in the fgc appreciate your contribution thank you for your service our poverty check will come in the mail for your dedication

[@chidorisnake22]

As another FGC head, this sentiment is seconded.

[@rayline1583]

The check comes in and it's just a coupon for an iced tea

[@chidorisnake22]

@@rayline1583 Iced tea, but with no ice. Are you kidding me? You know how much ice costs us because of inflation? We can't afford that shit. 😂

[@polinttalu7102]

As part of the FGC, I thirded

[@randalthevandal4170]

As a member of the Fgc I Fourthed

[@lavenderbeds]

"Making players only able to satisfy themselves by going into the hardest content that they like is only going to make them hate the rest of the game by proxy." This rings extremely true for their philosophy on healer design right now. Since I started current savage, healing literally anything is so boring because there is so little damage going out and nothing to do in the meantime. And their response was literally... "do Ultimate if you want a challenge". Yeah ok I will someday probably, but if it's the ONLY place where healing is fun? It isn't great. People can't do ultimate CONSTANTLY, there are very few of them. Healers need to have fun in other ways.

[@sgtass1]

I literally just got into savage raiding and it's some of the most fun I've had in years playing FFXIV. It really feels like I finally get to use the stuff I practiced so hard on

[@Hyuinn]

Same, even as a dps/tank, savage and ultimate are the only kind of content that I have to worry about something, to do the best that I can pull off. For everything else it doesn't matter if I die, if the healer dies, if the healer exists, if dps are even pressing buttons, if tank is mitigating damage, and so on. I've cleared all ultimates besides the most recent one and I don't personally like doing it because people get salty and frustrated and decide to give up either at the start or after months of progress, I even I was guilty of that when I wanted to get in.

[@Gogito4]

It feels like they are corralling older players into less and less content. Before Savage was the "hardcore" challange. And it was 4 fights per 6 months. Not huge but workable. Now everytime someone complains, especially healers, that Savage is being dumbed down, Yoshi tells them to go do ultimate. The content that gets one new fight per year. That's what people are supposed to play. How does that keep people's attention?

[@themanofquagga]

As a new savage raider on my first tier, playing SGE feels so drastically different in savages and in generic dungeons. For one thing all the interesting parts of the class stop existing if you're level syncd below 70, and for another, any non savage or extremecontent just doesn't put out enough damage or anything to be a threat. Having to customize my opener on P2S away from the Balance recommended one so that I could have shields and mitigation up far earlier to block Murky Depths and Sewage Deluge felt like a fun puzzle, and I've still got so much left to optimize about my gameplay, but none of it matters as soon as I leave savage and extremes, because all my optimizations are just to reduce overheal and prep for the hard hitting mechanics, and the dungeons and alliance raids just don't have anything where that matters, not like it increases my DPS or anything

[@AetherStar]

if they agreed with you, we would have terrible clear rates in normal mode content because the ppl that do play healer are already not good at it and more outgoing DMG will just make them not play the class or the game, resulting in more healer in need. don't bring that level of difficulty into normal mode where ppl don't even read their class skills

[@MythrilZenith]

15:55 Local DRG main, let's hope this isn't the most poorly aged statement in this video come 6.2 I love my static infinite-loop of a rotation, it's extremely easy / smooth brain and a slower GCD helps me think about what's going on in the fight instead of being buried in my bars. I might rage at the fact that every AoE I have is a straight line but it gets me moving around mobs in the rare dungeon I play DPS on to maximize my potential. I may wipe the raid by trying to greed my jumps at the wrong time, but that teaches me better timings, helps me learn mechanics more fully, and provides memorable moments in prog. I don't mind DRG being called "The slow melee" because I like the longer GCDs. If you want fast you have several other jobs to pick from, let DRG be slow. Just please PLEASE stop giving everything unique about every melee job to Reaper and dumbing down every other melee to compensate.

[@debatinghealer]

oh and give us our tether and glows back pls kthxbai

[@UkraineJames2000]

@@debatinghealer I think tether is a pretty cool guy. Eh buffs party member and doesnt afraid of anything.

[@debatinghealer]

@@UkraineJames2000 tether was the homie never forgetti

[@caoz9375]

Same with WAR, leave my unga bunga smooth brain class alone.

[@Aiscence]

dw soon you wont even jump anymore, it ll just be a hit

[@briezevaa3253]

I've been playing since last year and have started to level more jobs in between unlocking and completing higher level content and you have pretty much described my main frustration with the most recent updates. I WANT some jobs to be more challenging, I LIKE learning rotations and weaving and the little nuances of each job. And I'm worried that they are going to slowly remove all the charm and identity that each job has for the sake of being beginner friendly. I kind of expect that any new jobs should be considered more challenging to learn and play because it allows those who have played longer, or those looking for a challenge, to enjoy something new. Great video

[@anthonydelfino6171]

There is some level of complexity from job to job, but for the most part, none are terribly challenging. Speaking to the main ones I do play, ninja and monk are so similar in their game play its crazy, but ninja is definitely the more complex of the two

[@PSNMyfoot]

The saddest part is that they do that to make it beginner friendly, but at the same time they make the low level experience of the jobs more and more limited. Whenever they remove an old skill to add a new on at the end of the leveling experience, low lvl content becomes more miserable. And it's already pretty damn miserable.

[@yoji-_]

As someone that raided at a top level in HW and did speedkills in Creator, the game was definitely way more engaging back then than it is today. I'm sad that many of the players today had never gotten to experience what it was like to do things like: AST double balance pull then waiting on their draw cooldown, prepull popping infuriate on WAR then waiting on the timer to cooldown, never touching Defiance purely pulling only in Deliverance, while the ninja Shadewalkers the warrior and the AST precasts both shields and regen, while the SCH puts up Fey Wind for the attack speed buff, and neither healer casts a single heal for the first minute and a half of the fight on the tank because their HP bar is just a timer for when they use their immunity and the other tank provoked the boss off, so literally the entire party exclusively does balls-out DPS. Honorable mention: Fracture on WAR squeezed in for the last GCD of the Berserk window, cross-class Feint on BRD for movement and weaving without dropping Wanderer's, DRG and MNK both using Fracture for extra potency, using your SMN and SCH pets to absorb damage and cheese stack mechanics, abusing Trick Attack's debuff with Bane to snapshot debuffed dots onto every enemy, Holy had used up all your fucking MP (literally), Lustrate was a flat %-based heal instead of having potency, Raw Intuition guaranteed crit heals from the rear (momentarily). Shout out to Fell Cleave's awful screeching sound effect on release and Ring of Thorns destroying people's speakers when 20+ people were spamming it. RIP Aero III animation, Scourge animation, Shadow Flare (in general), Burning Arrow, Time Dilation, AST's aoe stun, Butcher's Block, Power Slash, Shadow Fang, Mutilate, and many other unique and cool skills. There may have been jank but it was fucking fun jank. I still long for the possibility of experiencing the heyday of HW again one last time. I doubt we'll ever get a true "FFXIV: ARR Classic" experience but I can dream.

[@rhael42]

"There may have been jank but it was fucking fun jank" perfectly sums up HW and ARR. It really was fun as fuck.

[@Callestere]

21:17 - 21:27 is exactly how I feel about most of MNK'S positionals being removed. I'm still doing positionals thanks to the muscle memory I developed learning the job. It's actually what made me enjoy the job enough to level it and use it as my main job.

[@sleepysera]

I hate MNK and only ever played it once every 2 years for the few hours it took me to raise it to the new level cap each expac, and I STILL automatically do the now non-existent positionals because muscle memory is a bitch lol

[@-Cetus-]

I like how they condensed some of the looser skills to context-sensitive buttons and took away the stances while making chakra available earlier, but it defintiely feels worse not having more positionals in.

[@WillowGreenheart]

But games need to do changes, removes, buffs and nerfs to be played. Even if your class is super duper complicated it is going to not be played if they don't do any changes. Why they do that things that you know already? Because they need to change them in a way that veteran players are not miles ahead of new players. This is MMO. And in fact... FF14... The MOST CASUAL MMO in the current "big mmo" market.

[@user-iq3vw8gj5g]

Right? Whats the point of riddle of earth now?

[@eleventy7]

Yeah, Monks lose the challenge of keeping Greased Lightning uptime, and the challenge of maintaining positionals, but there's the challenge of learning how to repilot the class every other update. ... The current Monk, with it's lack of jank and wonkiness is an odd experience.

[@superhello443]

Guys I have a feeling Mr. Chairman isn't happy about Samurai. Just, I dunno, some type of hunch.

[@FoxNightDream]

I'm still salty as fuck that we lost 4 positionals on monk.

[@Angel_Flash]

I still do my positionals on the first 2 combo buttons out of reflex...

[@Avery_Beausoleil]

@@Angel_Flash same lol

[@meuanglao7]

the positionals were literally the reason i picked up monk ksjdkjks i still have my hotbars set up for them, and i still do them dksjkdjsk

[@epicserpents7586]

Excellent video! I heavily agree that the simplification and homogenization of jobs is one of the biggest problems with the game and one of the things that makes me want to play less. The most recent ninja/samurai changes genuinely make me question if anyone who proposed them has ever played those jobs as they have been met with near unanimous dislike, and makes me worry about the changes to other jobs in the future. And you're right, this has been a constant trend since shadowbringers launch, so to hear Yoshi P's answer be "if you want to do healing content, go do ultimate" is so disheartening. You have to realize that if the only content that provides some level of engagement for 1/4th of the playable jobs is the pinnacle of difficulty that only releases one new piece of content a year at best that something is dramatically wrong.

[@dmillk]

Amen, on a sticky game like an MMO, having room to grow with your character is key and this is something I've been complaining about for years. Good healers have become really hard to find because the career healers moved to other roles after getting bored. Yet SE changes keep going in the same direction.

[@CivilChev]

Absolutely. As a Healer main since SB (played Spell Bard in HW) I, too, am looking to play RPR just so I can enjoy the game again.

[@renarenacat]

Maybe its just in jp server but WHM and is the most popular job and sage is really popular too. Thats why they are keep making the jobs easy because a lot of people liked it. Instead of making the jobs hard they made the actual fight hard in new ultimate. Also in hardcore content healers have a lot of optimizing on healing its pretty fun and I think its the hardest roll in ultimates.

[@dmillk]

@@renarenacat I mentioned healers in high-end. Yes, healer might be popular in other content because it has short queues and *you don't actually need to heal*. But for career healers who love to play support roles, FF14 has the worst healer gameplay of any game right now (including itself a few expansions back, it's not like healers were always bad). And harder content is very different from higher skill ceilings on roles. I don't care how hard ultimate is. It's one fight once a year, and the healers that have cleared ended up DPSing ~70% of it -during prog-. Which is basically a ONE BUTTON mash. If anything, Ultimate HIGHLIGHTS the problem because the people doing that content are good at the game and exactly the kind of people complaining about healer gameplay.

[@anthony26812]

@@dmillk not every healer that clears content is gonna be dpsing 70% of it, maximizing healing efficiency especially in the new ultimate where there's a lot of hard hitting unavoidable damage is difficult and the times you see it done both healers have practiced their healing rotation with each other throughout the fight and are communicating well. Not every healer pair clears like this, some heal more or heal over each other's heals, not every person who clears ultimates plays their class to perfection.

[@dmillk]

@@anthony26812 That isn't correct. Ultimate fights have tight enough checks that it really limits the amount of overheal and unoptimized play you can make as a healer. For example, the lowest-ranked healer to clear TEA (while the patch was current, ie: when better food/gear wasn't available), DPSed 65% of the time. What you're saying is true of other content and other skill tiers. But the point is that players who 'career' healers will get past that point eventually, it's not an 'if' it's a 'when'. And when they do there's nothing for them because the roles have been simplified to death and they will already be at the skill ceiling. Harder content isn't going to help.

[@paz8723]

Tanks before ShB were something else, we called DF Russian Roulette, just hoping that the DPS could weave emnity reduction

[@Klaudiuszeg]

Tanks in stormblood could easily do all dungeon with tank stance on and never drop the aggro, ever. And they did same dmg as they were doing in SHB with tank stance on. Stormblood percentile in dps for tanks was around 60-70% while in Shb it was below 50%.

[@ZurilasZone]

@@Klaudiuszeg they still did farless than othertanks in sb

[@johnnybravo8664]

@@Klaudiuszeg i played blm in sb and would pull aggro off tanks 100% of the time if I didn't use the aggro reduction skill.

[@plattbagarn]

@@johnnybravo8664 Because tanks tried to avoid using tank stance as much as possible since it reduced dps, and the dps stance didn't have aggro enmity on everything.

[@johnnybravo8664]

@@plattbagarn not always, plenty of tanks would stay in tank stance in dungeons and you could still rip aggro.

[@SeisoYabai]

Man I had a conversation on FF14 a couple months ago about how the leveling curve should be adjusted so that players can get more of their tools earlier so they can actially PLAY THEIR CLASS and LEARN IT and a couple people from Novice Network were telling me "uh no, we cant add ANY complexity because I know players that steuggle at level 1 to press their single button on cooldown" Like okay? Then the game isnt for those people! If were expecting the absolute most bare minimum single braincell gameplay, why even have classes? FF14 bleeds way more players from the typical boring mmo grind with 2 buttons than it ever did because the content was "too hard"

[@kio4896]

As a MNK main, I hated the old aggro system because I'm a good player and even with using Diversion on cooldown that meant getting clapped by mobs and bosses in dungeons. The old aggro system wasn't a system that challenged tanks, it was a system that punished good dps for being matched with a bad tank.

[@joshuarobinson1689]

It also punished good tanks for being with dps who didn’t want to pop diversion or lucid. And harshly punished tanks for dying. Now on top of weakness you get a self-imposed damage down. And to use your aggro combo that doesn't tie in to your rotation. And gods help you if you were a drk or pld, because then you lost resource and gcds as well.

[@anthonydelfino6171]

Having watched so many black mages in Heavensward pop raging strikes, but not quelling.... you'd have thought they'd known this was how it would end up. Ultimately no one wanted to be the one responsible for maintaining agro. I do think it was fair to back off from that since if you wanted to be the job that helped agro management, you were already playing ninja. Though now this new system, there's not really any such thing as agro management.

[@AWallace722]

There's definitely a way to design an aggro system that isn't completely flat or downright fucky, but it seems they chose to completely remove threat as a mechanic asides from tank swaps, which is kinda a shame tbh

[@pantherman8719]

Whoa damn lolllllll.

[@leroiducouscous0]

The thing is : when we play a team game, we are supposed to adapt constantly to our teammates. That's the very purpose of the game (like any team sport) It implied that DPS were supposed to take aggro into account in their gameplay to remind them they're not playing alone. Today, DPS gameplay is exactly the same when you are solo and in a team, and it's sad... Besides, signing for a random group means «I'm ready to try to adapt myself to anybody». If you're not in this mentality, don't sign for a random group and play with people you have learned to know before.

[@cser2453]

oh my freaken gosh this is EXACTLY how i feel. its what killed Astro 100%. astro was amazing at 3.0, and very complex. then they removed literally everything from the job

[@josuelafountaine5147]

Im right there with you man. Astro was damn near perfection back then lol I miss it

[@nycto5335]

My sibling still complains about the astro card changes to this day. Also complains about the nocturnal and diurnal sect changes but is more accepting of it compared to the cards.

[@Yee-Haw_Bird]

I hear so much cope about people saying “they had to rework everything since we don’t have TP anymore” just make it a DH buff like we had a crit buff

[@ittadakimaho]

Totally agree I really dont like the simplifications put in and seeing things being simplified more and more as the games live progresses. I feel like they might really end up making the game boring by oversimplifying and also if theres no challenge to be had, people will not learn anything either. Give players and also casual players more challenge and they will learn to adapt. Make everything super easy, and people do your content once, get bored and will never learn a thing.

[@judopunch2672]

A lot of the mention's changes are to homogenize damage/healing output to make it easier to balance the jobs in relation to each other preventing outliers that are clearly 'better'. Thats the reason everyone has a 123 combo and that fights are actually timed around the cooldowns of multiple (all?) classes. Easier to balance/design around.

[@TheSpicyLeg]

Correct. In reality, the min-max crowd is just as responsible for homogeneity. Game devs are well aware that any tiny advantage found will instantly become a preference, then the meta, then the requirement. Imagine that a small change makes, say, SAM do 2.5% more damage than any other job. Immediately you’ll see people change to SAM so that there is at least one in every static. A theorycrafter realizes that even with the diversity boost, having 4 SAMs ends up with a 1% damage advantage over a mix. Soon, PF has “only SAM” listed, even though the creator has no idea if it is true, or that only the top SAM players actually can make use of the advantage. Now people are making threads on Reddit and complaining. ‘SE doesn’t care!’ Come the shouts. Inevitably the nerf comes.

[@bigsisderpina]

Honestly, the old aggro system clashed the hardcore vs casual players rather hard, which was why the aggro change was kinda needed. Especially in alliance raids, there would be tanks who have raided savage never going into tank stance because obviously, it would've been a DPS loss, and aggro instead is either handled through shirking with the co-tank AND the rest of the team mashing their aggro management buttons as soon as it's off CD. However, that knowledge is widely unknown among casual players, so there would be *many* times where to the eyes of the average casual, the tank would look like they're not doing their job because they're not attempting to hold aggro. But, to the raiders, they would call out the casuals for not doing their job because they probably don't know those buttons even exist. Regardless of which side you take, both sides will have negative experiences because of it.

[@MaakaSakuranbo]

Eh, if you're so hardcore you're doing savage, you should be smart enough to know that Alliance raids aren't the same. As a healer, I expect people to not get hit in Savage other by things they cannot avoid, so you can plan your heals and whatnot. Of course there might be the odd slip up. But alliance raids? Psh, feel free to get hit, I'll heal you, its okay

[@scotaloo77g73]

It was really annoying to have all the fun ruined by samurais that didn't even bother using diversion. At least tankbusters helped them manage their aggro.

[@DarkDyllon]

@@scotaloo77g73 whenever i talk about old tank agro people go "oh boy, another 1 of those" which is ... weird? i always loved it as an MT and OT (switching back then between Warrior and Paladin) as Warrior i would start in tank stance (unchained to remove that penalty) and then after the 2nd hit i would also pop equilibrium for some healing agro (really did a good amount for it) then after the 3rd hit i would enter DPS stance and have my OT manage the emnity at that point by simply provoking and shirking at the right times. It gave the OT something to do other than be an blue DPS not actually participating in your role. the only issue with agro back then was white mages honestly, for 1 simple reason. benny generated so much that it was just poorly designed and their emnity management tool was build into their MP management tool (lucid dreaming) so unless you wanted to burn through MP you would grab agro really quick, they fixed that around the last savage tier of Stormblood and in Shadowbringers "we removed DPS stance because it was too hard to manage, look forward to it"

[@valizeth4073]

Not really sure what you're on about now, I never played when ARR was active but rather started in heavensward. And I never experienced this being an issue in neither heavensward or stormblood. It was merely another cool quirk of the game, that also made it very viable to bring ninjas as they had great agro management abilities as non-tanks. Removing aggro just made it more braindead.

[@scotaloo77g73]

@@valizeth4073 You couldn't mt optimally in Stormblood with casual players in the party due to 0 aggro management from their part. It was painful to constantly have to switch to tank stance just because a random dps didn't have Diversion on their hotbars or the ot didn't know how to voke shirk. Removing aggro made casual content bearable for people who knew the basics of the game.

[@klake4773]

Played, 2.0, took a break, came back in ShB. Lamented the PLD changes. Played SMN in ShB, lamented the changes in EW. And now, I am lamenting the changes to SAM. I'm in a weird place now where I can't find any jobs I enjoy playing as there were so few to begin with and the ones I thought weren't bad or actually did like got "fixed" for the worst. And forget content difficulty outside of the most endgame content. At this point, I've become so pessimistic about the game direction that I just don't see myself sticking to this game for the next 10 years. Which sucks because I have no replacement for it.

[@minnyninnymcbinnycinny2362]

New summoner kinda feels like a low skill ceiling, low skill class with flashy effects to compensate for how boring the class is. The fact they made summoner try to feel like other mages makes the class not feel as special as it once was especially with how unique it used to be.

[@bogerdank]

Coming back to this video every so often whenever homogenization/job design gets put into question. 2 years and counting and yet the entire video aged like fine wine. Great job Mr. Chair.

[@SpeakingAxe]

This is pretty spot on. I started in ShB and mostly main some tanks in hard content but I felt like in Endwalker they really dumbed down some things. Removing gauge management and other things, I still love this game and I think they strike a good middle ground to attract all players as that's what they want. Though there are some aspects I wish they didn't remove say example all WARs gauge management, and most of monks positionals - that was monks identity. That and another gripe I have is the tanks have always felt very samey, but again I started in ShB. Hopefully a good middle ground is kept without lowering the bar too much in the future. Keep it up. Edit also cone AoEs we're nice. You got more range and in high end content like tea that could save you from using that one range gcd and hit both bosses with a cone. Niche but cool.

[@TenaciousJ2323]

(Tank main here) I think there are some legitimate arguments to dumbing down aggro management. Several jobs push up against the limit of buttons that people can reasonably use. Having Diversion on most DPS jobs just felt like a button tax, and ignoring it would allow lazier players to limit the performance of tanks. Combined with that, Shadewalker and Smokescreen heavily pushed a Ninja metagame on tanks who wanted peak performance. I would have preferred a solution in which the aggro management is still entirely on the tanks to control, because relying on randomly-matched people to cooperate felt bad, but also maintain stances like Defiance and Deliverance on each tank that would change some functions. Warrior did this very well because of the way Unchained worked and the way Upheaval used to work with HP increases like Defiance and Thrill of Battle. Using Unchained, Thrill of Battle, and Upheaval allowed a spike in damage that could minimize the DPS loss of using Defiance for a short time. Paladin had no such options for Shield Oath, and Blood Price didn't really overcome the damage loss of Grit in Stormblood. With all that said, Gunbreaker is there for people who want some complexity in their tanking and has no memories of the old days of aggro management attached to it. I'd personally say the same for Dark Knight since it's effectively a new job since Shadowbringers.

[@zeening]

1000000000000000%, literally cannot believe someone is whining that they miss threat management... like WTF? clearly he didn't tank. and if he did then he clearly he's the type of dude to slam his junk in the door for fun. that was literally the WORST thing about tanking, the craptastic DPS would REEEEEEEEEEE BLOW ALL COOLDOWNS AND BIGGEST HITS BEFORE THE TANK IS EVEN AT THE BOSSS NOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW WHO CARES ABOUT AGGRO!!!!!!!!!! what a horrible take, idc what its SUPPOSED to be like, how it IS in every single game that has it, outside of your "static"/raid whatever, 80-90% of the time brainlet DPS don't care and pull the boss and unload on it before you even get close OH BOY YAY NOW HES GOT A HUGE AGGRO LEAD ON ME AND IM JUST WALKING UP TO THE BOSS NOW! boom dead dps... healer stops to rez... boom dead tank because its all happening so fast and noone was prepared.... yeah no i'd rather be able to toss my axe once on my way in and that's that. absolutely one of the dumbest takes i've ever heard from misshapen chair

[@XDamainI]

@@zeening I wasn't around then but I remember FF XI. DPS (called SUP then) would pull with heavy hits then tanks would provoke to take back aggro (hate.) Sounds like tanking in XIV was actually harder than its predecessor XI.

[@qamarqammar7629]

Very interesting discussion. Personally, there was a time when I enjoyed mastering jobs beyond my personal comfort zone and then playing them in hard content. It was fun. Now I have less time and energy for it, so I play what is easy (comfortable) for me and I play it in casual content. But I don't want them to take away the skill ceiling for players who do have the desire and time. There are plenty of jobs and content we can do at a more comfortable level. Even when I am not optimizing a job, after playing it for some time it is more fun if there are optimizations. It keeps things fresh and harms no one. And I agree you can't keep veterans around without some high ceilings, even casual players get better over time just by sticking around. I love what you said about FFXIV segregating casual and hardcore content, so nobody steps on each others' toes. This is one thing that brought me to the game and keeps me here. It is great for both sides and ironically keeps the community from being divided and toxic to each other. I hope they don't remove skill ceilings. They are good for all of us.

[@DeadEye935]

Jobs having intentionally designed problems they need to overcome is definitely something there needs to be more of. I keep seeing so many people want TBN to not have a MP cost or gunbreaker to lose continuation, but those are like the main things that actually make those jobs interesting to play. TBN is so much fun to learn to use effectively in every fight, and misusing it actually has a consequence. So yeah it feels bad when you fuck it up, but that just makes it feel even better when you get that sound when the TBN pops. Dark Knight has always historically been a risk/reward job in FF, and TBN is like the one thing it has that actually feels like that. Hell, it's something I wish other tanks had some of too. I wish gunbreaker had a cooldown that used a cartridge, warrior to have one that uses beast gauge, so that there could be some choice to make in how you manage your resources beyond just saving things for burst windows. Gunbreaker without continuation would also be terrible. What would its identity be then? A tank that has a different 123 combo every 30 seconds? Anytime people have some issue with the game, it seems their first thought is to change the job when something else could be changed instead. Why remove guaranteed crit/DH from Inner Release when you could just make chain strategem and other buffs like it it also increase crit damage too? Why remove continuation when you could give them range so that moving the boss during burst windows is somewhat easier, or make it so you get stacks of continuation that you can spend wherever? Overall, I like a lot of the job changes, particularly with tanks, there's very little I have to complain about. I mostly just wish we had more risk/reward. Like how Scholar can choose to use aetherflow on damage or healing abilities depending on the situation/comfort level. Or white mage where healing abilities directly feed into its damage now. Having stuff like that for tanks and mitigation would be fantastic. I don't like the mentality some folks seem to have that there never should be anything that requires sacrificing your damage. IMO, that's a big source of job homogenization too. Job resources are only ever used for damage, the exceptions being healers and dark knight.

[@Cassandra_Solidor]

While I agree with your overall sentiment, I have to disagree with TBN. There are multiple issues with the "complexity" of that ability. First and foremost, tying a defensive skill with offensive output is never a good decision because damage will always be prioritized in this game. In a scenario where you're uncertain whether TBN will break, you'll opt not to use it over risking 500 potency. Now I know the go to argument is "well, you didn't need it then!" That may be the case but now you have one tank deliberately taking more damage than the others. This impacts whether the healers need to spot heal in regards to that extra damage. A bigger factor in why I dislike TBN's design is it can be entirely out of your control. I'll use P2S as my example. In order to keep uptime on Avarice, where a tank and DPS have to go to the wall/corner, DRK and WAR blow several CDs and shield themselves to avoid getting a damage down. For DRK, specifically, you need TBN, Rampart and Shadow Wall. If I get any other mitigation like say, Heart of Light or Corundum, TBN won't break. The extra damage mitigated from those additional CDs is just enough to prevent TBN from breaking. However, you need TBN to avoid that damage down as replacing it with Dark Mind/Oblation won't mitigate enough to avoid reducing the damage to zero. Hence why GNB and PLD need to invuln for uptime. In the above circumstance, I have no control over my own optimization. Worse, the group can't have too much AoE mitigation or I'll lose damage. Now this is a niche scenario but goes to highlight the problem with TBN. And that isn't even getting into how inconsistent boss autos and such can be. Basically, moving that complexity to a pure damage skill not unlike Third Eye keeps to the same idea without taking away control from the DRK. In regards to GNB. Continuation is absolutely fine. The simple change here is increasing the range to 6y. That way you can move the move without risking your cartridge combo.

[@RudolvonStroheim]

You got punished more in HW for being stupid on Dark Knight than you do now.

[@eryft8764]

@@Cassandra_Solidor Really like your idea of increasing range on continuation. The weapon is literally half gun, so why not give it a little extra range?

[@maxmustermann3938]

The only risks WAR has right now is using your IR when you actually wanted to get knocked back, as well as the animation lock

[@HyMyNameIsMatt]

I don't want Dark Knight to lose TBN, I just don't want the other tanks to get a just as good or better equivalent resource for free. TBN is fun cause you can misuse it, but that feeling sours when you know you could have just played another job that can not possibly misuse their stuff.

[@FastDeathbycat]

A) FFXIV is essentially carrying Squenix at this point. Part of the push to making an MSQ "story mode" is to bring in people who play other FF games but don't have MMO skills, and I think some of the lowering of the skill floor to begin playing is part of that. B) As someone who started in ShB as a healer main with no MMO experience, I think a lot of the perception of it as braindead relies on playing with competent people. While I do think some of the simplification has been for the worse, being responsible for three other people who won't stop standing in bad (you will be blamed if they die) while also learning movement is more stressful than people make out. Also WHM getting weave windows was needed so that people who start as WHM actually learn how to play other jobs (as someone who started as WHM).

[@Luminescentassassin]

At this point is escentially "If I dont find fulfillment outside hard content, the game sucks"

[@haziqtheunique]

The thing with devs not playing different jobs is a real issue, since it leads to the devs not understanding why people play certain jobs & what they get out of them. It honestly feel like a lot of jobs exist in whatever limbo exists within an intern's head until Yoshi P actually tries something other than BLM, reads (some) of the feedback (from JPN players) & institute changes that people long asked for.

[@ZenthonPrime]

I'll chime in as a BLM player and say that even the favored jobs aren't immune to weird design fuckups that "normal" players wouldn't dare suggest. Moving Leylines from 90s to 120s was a *bizzare* change that has absolutely zero positive effects on BLM gameplay. Our AoE also received severe downgrades at level cap for no apparent reason, including Foul getting absolutely gutted (60% falloff on extra targets makes it worse than even HF2 for 3+ enemies, and remember it used to be 20% falloff and higher potency) and the loss of the incredibly smooth Cold Flare rotation. BLM is far from bad or anything but the 6.0 changes were pretty wack aside from Paradox (and 90% of Paradox being good is a complete accident). Never mind I'm playing BLM now because my old main of SMN got, uh, removed from the game. Egis I can happily live without, but losing 30s ED, R4/EA management, DoTs, actual interaction with Demis, Phoenix combo, all meaningful cleave gameplay, 90% of cast times, and all rotational flexibility? Yeah it's just not even a job at that point. Fun fact, they didn't even fix the bug that caused Phoenix to require a triple weave / clipping, they just made FBT a GCD so that you physically couldn't go "too fast" for the dumb bird.

[@ibigfire]

It would be a real issue if it were true. The dev team is large, they absolutely do play all the jobs so no idea why this dude thinks they don't.

[@ssjgokuhan]

I am a very casual player that doesn't even do current expansion EX trials, but my fun comes from doing the standard easy content as well as possible, pushing to max DPS and uptime. The dumbing down of jobs is making easy content that I used to enjoy much more boring because there are less ways to optimize my play.

[@celestielsigh]

How do you enjoy optimizing in easy content but won't do current difficult content where optimization is actually rewarded?

[@mitsudafanni7978]

I have a similar mindset to OP, so here's my take: I do not want to have to schedule aside time to play a with a static. I used to raid like this a decade ago in WoW and I don't want to do it again. Having to forgo external social interactions because they coincide with a raiding schedule sucks. Feeling like I have to play or else I'm letting the team down, because I want to do or play anything else sucks. I don't want a static because, even though I love the game, I don't always want to play it everyday. I'm regards to Party Finder, while I don't mind throwing a few hours at a fight to learn it and then optimize from there, I don't enjoy throwing an other dozen or so to chance upon finding an actual clear party to do so. This gets increasing difficult if I just don't feel like playing the week an Extreme comes out (I can't talk about Savage as I've never tried). While I have no issue with the game allowing players to separate those that have cleared from those who haven't, it does have the side effect of lowering the amount of players that can play skillfully enough to clear over time. So ultimately, I feel that if I don't clear (or play) week one, then it's not worth the opportunity cost to even attempt. Tl;dr: The biggest barrier to entry for Extreme/Savage content is the time investment to find a decent and like minded group, and the opportunity cost that comes with it.

[@ssjgokuhan]

Mitsu nails it. I did harder stuff in FFXI back in the day and even did first Coil, but have no desire to invest that much time now. I did Zurvan EX when it was current, but the number of utterly terrible farm parties you find in the PF means you can spend entire evenings getting nothing even if you yourself have the fight down pat. So I just do the standard normie content and push myself to make it fun. But the more dumbed down it gets, the fewer ways we can actually optimize, the less fun it becomes. RIP kaiten, SAM was my boy :(

[@FufuhBR]

@@mitsudafanni7978 yep. I finally decided to do high end content in FFXIV this week (started playing last july, almost caught up when EW dropped, so I was a late to EXs/Savage, end up not doing it because of it and dropped my sub in late january until 6.1) and it's exactly that. EX, at least EX3, has been relatively ok so far, but trying P1S has been a nightmare. It's not even a hard fight, but several months after the content drop, the only people not doing [Duty Complete] runs are usually not very good at the game and you only need 1 player not doing mechanics correctly to ruin a run. I'm sure I can keep trying until I get a decent group and P2S and above should be more or less fine (well, maybe not P3S from what I've heard), but yeah, it was exhausting doing several hours of raiding, effectively mastering the fight and still not clearing it because of 1 or 2 players messing up mechanics or leaving and effectively resetting the prog.

[@itsteebz484]

Because for some (like me), optimization is its own reward. Does it really matter if I, the MCH, shave off 10 seconds off of Pandaemonium 1 Normal because I pressed my buttons betters? No. But I'll know that I did so and it feels fun doing it, so...I do it.

[@kirbycakes1020]

My tin foil hat opinion is that these changes were made to push more players towards harder content, and possibly "encourage" them to stay subbed for longer. By lowering the skill floor for most jobs, it makes the baseline performance level for savage and extreme easier to achieve, and therefore makes it more accessible for more players. You'd be more inclined to give that content a shot as a casual player if you are of the understanding that you only need to take a 101 course on your job rather than getting a 4 year degree. I think unfortunately this does come at a cost of established job identity for veteran players, and I hope they do not continue to homogenize jobs more, but we'll see.

[@MareLooke]

If a job is not fun to play in anything but the hardest content players will eventually just stop playing. We really don't need a re-run of how Blizzard managed WoW.

[@Klaudiuszeg]

This wouldnt be needed, if they decide to make harder versions of dungeons.

[@Skyace13]

This is some good shit. Anyone who claims this is still the villain arc doesn’t know shit. This is a fucking love letter. It’s the argument you had with your significant other about their negative qualities. “Don’t do this, I can’t love you through these decisions you’re making.” Chair knows a thing or two about being misshapen. He doesn’t want the things he loves to be twisted and lifeless, like himself. The real MVP

[@BranBal]

You learned English with americans, right? Good points, though

[@salamonhaichat]

Damn, what a wonderfully crooked paragraph. You have a way with words, sir.

[@Rc3651]

Been playing since 2.0 and I hard agree. The job simplifications over time really hurt, especially as a healer. I miss having shit to do, and Yoshi-P saying "If you want to have fun healing play Ultimates" is wholly unhelpful

[@TheOneGreat]

As an AST I hear you.

[@TheOneGreat]

@ It's busy but not hard. The card changes are absolute garbage. And now Divination doesn't even use cards anymore. It's sad.

[@TheWhitetagz]

@@TheOneGreat I agree with the card. But ast is hard to many folk because the rotation it’s self is too busy. Most just op for sage or whm. Considering the next high skill wall for healer is scholar and majority barley understand how to use fairy or trust fairy too much. On top of that many forget ast job as a whole is burst healing and to use the OGCD vs gcd in many end game content. So yeah it’s hard once you start learning rotations and incorporating it into savages. And ultimates.

[@rhael42]

@@TheWhitetagz not a single job in this game is actually hard, including ast.

[@ziekwalt7823]

Yoshi P has gone on record saying something close to this "I want everyone to play my game." This is why the ARR MSQ changed to accommodate solo game players. While that was a nice change and why the skill floor keeps being raised up I'd like him to know of a saying. "When you make something for everyone, you make something for no one." If you try to accommodate every possible person you will eventually alienate everyone.

[@ThatOneEnder]

absolute banger of a video honestly. fantastically well spoken here. really puts to words some feelings about the game that I have had brewing for a while far better than I ever could put it lol.

[@gryffinp]

dear yoship please revert 6.1 samurai changes so this man can feel peace again

[@SilverforceX]

As a WAR main, your point on Overpower change from Conal to Circle is spot on. I play other tanks too. WAR AoE being a Cone + Circle rotation is part of the job identity, since you have to figure out how best to cleave with a cone attack and move for the circle aoe. The cone is also nicer since it has longer range, it allows bunching mobs behind you as you run forward, to slam down Overpower and hit them all. It was a stupid change, homogenizing all the tanks AoE to cone.

[@MareLooke]

I've pretty much stopped tanking dungeons with randoms over this change. It's just not enjoyable anymore. They already simplified WAR to the point it almost plays itself, but at least those changes basically made it impossible to make mistakes, while not really touching the way the job played. The Overpower change ruined WAR dungeon gameplay entirely, on the other hand.

[@jarad9946]

it seems to be the problem with most of these discussions is that there is an assumption that a meaningful amount of the player base care about "skill ceiling" and it seems to be the case that does not exist, FF is not on average played by people who care about being good at the game COMPARED to other MMO's or games of similar style. this can be demonstrated by how "easy" the jobs and content has become but yet the amount of people who complete that content is a small portion of the overall player base. it seems to be a good idea to make the jobs themselves moderately simple and smooth while using the actual in game events to test the skill curve of players IE " make the jobs easy but the raids hard"

[@isateasane]

imo why make a job more simple if you can already play it simply and clear content. if the majority only want to play normal content, then go ahead you can. did you have to press on kaiten to clear? no. You can even remove it from hotbar. these type of changes literally only hurt endgame players

[@omegacloud222]

I agree to an extent. But the problem is making things easier for players who dont even press their buttons to begin with literally doesnt matter because theyre not even using them. So the change is completely pointless because the people who werent complaining now have to completely fix their completely fine-tuned rotation for players who wont even press their buttons. I cant tell you how many times ive seen people with completely maxed out job lists that dont even know what a basic AoE rotation is in a dungeon. Making changes for these kinds of people literally does nothing and only hurts the people who put time and effort into actually learning.

[@deerby1500]

The problem isnt the playerbase, well at least not directly, its the compromizing of said skill ceiling to cater to those said players. Thats legit the point of this video, it is hurting its veteran players by watering down the games mechanics and its content for the sake of leveling the playing field. You can argue if thats good or bad all you want, but it isnt the point of the videos title. Its hurting its veteran playerbase regardless.

[@ZenthonPrime]

The entire point of this video is that if you make the jobs simple and raids hard you end up with high-end players hating the game outside of Savage/Ultimate because they can't have fun in casual content.

[@everyonethinksyoureadeathm5773]

@@omegacloud222 that's not even the case. The biggest issue is still the servers. Having to press X button in weaving to do Y skill and trying to figure out why it didn't hit....only to find out the sever didn't register the input is pure ass. It's not so much they are dumbing down the classes, they are also playing with restrictions due to them not having proper net code. Something they need to fix soon or each class will just have 5-6 buttons to avoid imput issues.

[@ShockedLogic]

I want to add that it seems like sometimes the Dev team makes changes because of complete misinterpretations of what people want out of their jobs. For example, the Samurai changes near the start of EW where the range on out iajutsus were extended. IIRC, the dev team said they thought it was what we sam players really wanted to stop our casts getting interrupted by boss movement. Its an alright QoL change, but it really wasnt too much of a problem, the issue was very easy to adjust around.

[@Josith13]

Tanks were at peak fun in Stormblood, DRK particularly with the shield > blood gauge reward cycle. SHB watered them down beyond piss.

[@Verd254]

As a NIN main the trick changes were not that big a deal to me because my rotation effectively did not change. Lack of pre-pull doton had a bigger impact there. However, my party are the ones who miss the 1 minute buffs, especially our warrior. Kind of an odd dynamic there.

[@CompressionPolice]

Pre-pull doton + hide was great in dungeons, I miss it :(

[@Verd254]

@@CompressionPolice Yeah, it does suck we lost that. Felt nice to pop that down and hit him with 3 fireballs in a row.

[@syralight]

I remember having to MP manage when AST was released in HW. It was very hard for me at first, but I grew to love it how it was and have mained it ever since. It was fun having the Ewer card lower the MP required to cast spells. I enjoyed it when they changed it to an MP regen and you could use another card mechanic to strengthen, increase the duration to about 1 min, or aoe buffing with a 50% decrease in strength to the whole party. It made my favorite class very fun to play. Now I can't even give people an aoe buff or even increase the duration of said buff from a card.

[@NSQuote]

I think some of the more confusing changes are have the intention of "allowing for ten more years of expansions and new skills without too much button bloat" - I suppose the strategy is to remove skills and start consolidating buttons now so that the new expansions feel like a step forward by the time they are out. Though it does make gameplay less satisfying in the meantime. :(

[@darkwulf2k]

I will say as a NIN main, I got upset an the Trick attack change at first, then I realized what they actually did, and love the change. Mug is now Trick attack to stack with the 2 min buffs, and now i get a personal buff every min. Works for me.

[@tangentkatz]

Yeah my initial reaction was negative, but since playing it after the change I'm enjoying it. I don't mind the group buff being braindead easy and the personal buff taking more work. AST is similar (just the AST personal buff is underwhelming).

[@h4rdtr]

Same, job still plays and feels the same so all is well.

[@h4rdtr]

@@tangentkatz AST needs some rework imo. Cards are really annoying now with only 1 redraw per card and I STRONGLY DISLIKE lady of crowns. Also, crown play and minor arcana are 2 buttons because...? Give me more redraws so I can actually get the good buff and remove lady of crowns (or at least make it good) and just make crownplay 1 button and you've got pretty nice AST. Edit: Also, remember sleeve draw? Why is that gone? Bring it back. It's mathematically the hardest to get a 3rd arcanum so having a free screw off rng button every so often was quite nice.

[@SheonEver]

People never understand removing perceived 'clunkiness' from a job if they, themselves, never found the aspect being changed clunky, or are just so used to it, now, that it's second nature. That's not to say I agree with every change, personally, since I don't believe everything that was changed was indeed clunky, but chances are the class designers thought it was, and when they saw people complaining about it enough they decided it was time to change it and see how that change went over, based on data we don't access to.

[@gwendolynprovost191]

The thing is that they definitely want to move more of the game's difficulty from job gameplay to fight mechanics. And making jobs more similar makes fight design easier, because there are fewer unique abilities to design around. And moving more of the difficulty to the content frees job choice to be more about aesthetics, which is the biggest draw of a job for most players.

[@TardustheToasty]

You are very good at getting your thoughts and points across. And also in an entertaining way. Thank you!

[@axylum4453]

I love it when he said "Nippon steel" in the comparison between Sam and rpr

[@Tessa_Ru]

There's some good general points, but I also think there's some nostalgia goggles going on too lol. No one had fun managing TP (or losing it all to sprint or aoe rotation), or having your dps nerfed when tank stance was on, or dps being able to grief more often by playing the aggro fight game. I think the spirit of this video is good. We have a lot of issues, I would argue the biggest problem is how boring every healer becomes once you gain any level of skill with it. But I believe there is a happy medium that they are trying to aim for, they're missing it on a lot of the jobs, but they've shown they can get it right sometimes. Like personally, i like reaper, and I like new SMN. I loved HW SMN, it was my beginning main. What they did to it in StB and ShB made me drop it. The EW version is completely different and kinda brain dead, but it is fast paced and flipping through the summons the way it currently does feels like a good direction. There's too many people complaining that don't actually seem to understand what they are asking for. Do you want Job uniqueness, or for everything to be viable everywhere? I honestly do not think we can have both to the degree that people want to demand. Because for them to be truly unique it means one will absolutely be better at something more than others.

[@wrathava]

exactly, jobs were more unique in HW and it caused certain jobs like paladin to be useless. it's a paradox.

[@abavendarlocke5455]

When it comes to complaining about weaving, I never really see that unless it's from people with higher ping. In some places, some jobs are just not as good to play because the high ping stops you from doing things like double weaving, which is almost essential for certain jobs. As someone from Australia who used to play exclusively on an NA server I can tell you that playing with high ping on jobs that, if you want to play optimally in savage content, need you to do so is definitely not as viable, Even if you really enjoy the way the job plays. So unless they fix how button presses are managed like some mods do, (although I've never used them), I think it's okay for people to complain about it. Because for them, it is a genuine issue.

[@PipPanoma]

Oh I definitely complain about it. But I don't play those jobs anymore. It makes me sad that I can't play them anymore, but the busy part is what I liked about them. Ninja wouldn't be ninja without mudras.

[@AnaseSkyrider]

If they could unspaghetti their code and make more optimizations, it wouldn't be so bad, but it's a high ping life for me.

[@SiriusPP]

If you have above 120~150 ms to a server, Alexander mod becomes a must, sadly.

[@QuestionQuestionMark]

It’s also a self induced issue. If I’m on NA and I play on JP servers and complain about ping. That’s my fault, I’m CHOOSING to play on the JP server with jank ping instead of playing on a server that’s closer to me. I’ll never understand why people complain about ping when they play on servers on other parts of the world, truly baffling.

[@AnaseSkyrider]

@@QuestionQuestionMark Sadly, most of us just have high ping because shit internet.

[@TheSpicyLeg]

I’m a mediocre player, though I do complete savage tiers. The reason I say I’m mediocre is that my primary desire is to have fun. Now people confuse this all the time; having fun and always succeeding are not the same thing. In fact, many of my fondest memories came from failures. For example, P7 just released, and I went with duty finder instead of my static because I like to get, well, the not as good or geared people. I also went as WHM instead of my main, WAR. We wiped 4 times, and the group quit. I queued again, 2 more wipes, and then we beat down tree girl. Everything about this battle is a nightmare for healers. But Jesus did I have fun. It was pushing me to my healing limits. Yet I don’t parse, I don’t pentameld, I don’t theorycraft what will give me .05% damage boost. I do savage because I enjoy the company of my static. They’re irreverent, goofy, and funny people. If they die, especially stupidly, there is howls of laughter. If it ever gets to where I’m with sweats who lose their shit because they lost GCD uptime, I’ll quit raiding. I don’t play this game to have a bad time. I don’t play this game like it’s my career. That makes me mediocre, and I couldn’t care less.

[@SorcGaming]

If the content is easy, that doesn't stop you from trying to play the best you can, do healers need to slidecast their DMG cast to kill the boss? No, but they will still do it since that's optimal, that's why I think logs are truly the end content for raiders. Plus week 1 of new raids if you in a group that doesn't do much DMG or some dies you will die to enrage most fights so you need to be optimal on your rotarion

[@syenite]

Shout out to all the WHMs who complained in SB that AST was too hard and then when AST was simplified in Shb, complained that it was still too hard, and then when AST was even more simplified in EW, those WHMs decided that actually they just really like WHM. I will never not be bitter about AST being put on training wheels because people saw thought it was unfair that AST got to be pretty looking and the prettiest looking job shouldn't be the hardest!

[@dragumkirisute1998]

Stormblood AST was never hard.... those players just were not good at the job. (I wanted tried to say that as nicely as possible btw lol)

[@redwrath5]

I hope someone can give this japanese subtitles so the dev team can see this

[@Irimu_]

If they haven't made combos into one button by next expansion I'll be impressed.

[@anthonydelfino6171]

They did. But just for PvP ;) Oh... and gunbreaker (which I still refuse to use on just one button after three years of having the cartridge combo on three)

[@tcg2717]

People are literally begging for this to happen, and are already doing it through third party tools. So I honestly think it's inevitable.

[@ShadeCrenshaw]

The Samurai cone changes really baffled me. I'm no hardcore player, I'm an even filthier casual than chair, I'm in an UWU group but I just wanna do my rotations correct and press shit on cooldown, including buffs, maybe that's playing the job incorrect, I dunno, but I'm enjoying myself and I'm not SEEMINGLY holding the group back. But those cone-changes really confused me. Honestly I find hitting a wide-ass cone far easier than a circle AOE... wondered why samurai felt pretty weird to play in dungeons, especially since their pre-86 AOE starter is STILL a cone. But the Iaijutsu isn't.

[@Lordy194]

I can go both ways with the Tenka Goken changes. Didn’t really prefer one over the other though I will say that I think me biggest issue was that the direction of the cone was based one you target (same for overpower). I don’t particularly think ff has a good tab targeting system which caused me to miss half a trash pack from time to time though. I think they should just have made the cone shoot out in front of you.

[@Carnyzzle]

I like how Endwalker is probably the easiest FF has ever been but people somehow still fuck up playing jobs

[@MrProg-ey3tl]

@ Those are certainly some opinions.

[@scrunglebungus4992]

I'm so fucking glad this video exists I can't find anyone that agrees why do so many people want all the jobs to be playable by actual monkeys, it's not even like you need to know your rotation properly to do 80% of the content in the game

[@gundown26]

While I agree on everything said of the things said here I'm going to have to respectfully disagree on aggro management for tanks. The only thing stance dancing served to so was punish the player for holding aggro my nerfing thier damage but increasing aggro rate. While it was purposeful in heavensward, it's existence was rendered moot in stormblood with the introduction of shirk. Its why for a good minute i was frustrated with PLD during shadowbringers becuase despite the removal of that god awful waste of button pressing I was still being punished for tanking. Good complexity is not more buttons. Good complexity is learning and creating ways to make buttons work together to get high dopamine. It's why I got so pissed that AST was loosing the funny rng and cool effects of its cards in place of "it just increases damage". instead of what I would of proposed was to add a card combo effect when ever two or more cards on the feild creating a cascading effect for the party. For example Balance + Bowl = special party buff. your not adding buttons but your adding more complexity to a job with the tool you already have. Edit: rewatched to the end and you basically made my point but much better. Gdi.

[@kleinfeder]

Aggro management was just a little gimmick, DPS had skills to reduce their aggro so you never had to stance juggle unless you're playing with the hardest casuals out there or your gear was just bad.

[@paradeoffools]

I 100% agree that the removal of Samurai’s conal damaged the overall gameplay of mob clearing. Before it was all about weaving in and out of danger zones while maintaining uptime on as many targets as possible. There is a satisfying movement that is cohesive with the conal directions. The class now feels quite dull when it comes to dungeon clearing. Don’t even get me started on Kaitan because I feel naked without it.

[@cmerk100]

How does an aoe or cone change the fact you should move out of an aoe targetted on you. The only change is that you don't have to move as much as part of your actual rotation, and even then, as classes with conal aoes you could just cone from the middle of mobs and hit them all anyways because of how hitboxes in this game work.

[@paradeoffools]

@@cmerk100 I think you’re misunderstanding the form and function with the identity of the role. Perhaps it is easier to stand in the center of the pack and Conal through it. But thats not how i conduct my movement. Theres a specific feeling that is satisfying for the samurai conal that follows up into the circular aoe. From a gameplay perspective of the minigame, we slash from the outside cleaving into the swarm. The samurai movement pushes you into the mob as though you dashed in, following with an circular aoe, repeat for two sen totals. The Sam then moves back to the edge of all the mobs and performs Tenka Goken and maybe Kaeshi Goken. In the middle of this youre weaving shoha(variants) and Kyuten. The loop of sam’s aoe rotation is akin to dashing in and out of combat. It goes beyond the function and more into the flow of combat. Edit: Its more than just standing in the center and aoeing as a sam. Theres a slough of movement that replicates or roleplays a samurai dashing in and out of combat. Not just sitting in the center and spamming. Maybe to some folks it’s efficient, but its not fun to me. This is from an individual who has played sam as their main role when i started the game in 2018.

[@cmerk100]

@@paradeoffools To me the core identity of sam was the sticker system in combination with the cast bar system, which is a play on the FF11 design of how it would self chain weaponskills for large bursts which they represent in this case as the sen stickers. Weaving in more weaponskills between your other skills also fits with the offensive style of Samurai culminating in the big satisfying casted weaponskill striking down your enemies, and managing these is what's core to sam. Want to know what's not core to sam identity? Whether one of your aoes was a cone or not.

[@paradeoffools]

@@cmerk100 I think thats where you’re wrong. You can’t totally parallel the two games because they are fundamentally different. This is based off my understanding when the game had a level 70/75 level cap. FF11 at my time of playing was more a single pull grind for leveling, maybe two if a bard pulled then slept the next target. But that aside, the aoe rotation of samurai was a core part of its identity because it made the job stand out unalike a lot of other melees. There is something enticing about the disadvantages of a conal and diversifies the gameplay from other melees. I like the micro-movements as i wind slashed conal before diving into the enemy ranks. I think you’re more focused on the efficiency and exploitation of game design that you fail to see the flow of samurai combat within a dungeon setting. The identity of sams flow is in both their single/aoe rotation.

[@cmerk100]

@@paradeoffools I am not focused on efficiency at all. I just disagree with your opinion on what the core identity of samurai is. I just disagree that the change to conal aoe affects samurais identity in any fashion, as dodging aoes is STILL required, and you could in fact cleave from the middle of most pulls anyways. All it changes is whether your movement is required by the rotation. For example I don't like that SE removed an ability from sam, I think that should have stayed in. I don't think conal or aoe really adds much diversity to the game because most aoe pulls are just slamming everything into one big pull and spamming aoe's the distinction between cone and aoe becomes pretty much meaningless with how hit boxes work to begin with and does not add meaningful or interesting gameplay design. Their rotation is exactly the same as before.

[@alex5623]

The case of Hissatsu: Kaiten specifically is a curious one, because to me it always seemed like "fake" complexity. It is a button that has no other functional use than to always be used before your Iaijutsu. Never for any other weaponskill, and there is not a single Iaijutsu you wouldn't use it for. You ALWAYS use it. There is no thought to using it. There is no skill expression in using it. Because you JUST do it. It is just a button that buffs up your damage that you unquestionably use in every instance. To the point the complexity no longer exists. It is simply an additional button press to open up another button. It's the button you press to open up the door to a safety bunker. Except that it doesn't actually open up the door, it simply opens up a hatch revealing another button to press that is actually the one that will open the door to the bunker. The change does not cater to casuals, it does not cater experts either. It doesn't cater to any one player. It caters to getting rid of button bloat for a game that is already meant to be played with both keyboard and mouse, or a Playstation controller. And if we need to get rid of a button to make space for more and to ease up button bloat, the button that doesn't have any functional use other than to enable another button should come first. Equally, the existence of Ogi Namikiri as a separate button from Ikishoten, despite the former only being functional if Ikishoten is on cooldown, is also something they should consider for button bloat. It does not add skill to a class that actions that are combo'd to each other take several buttons on your preferred type of control. But most of us like them being on different buttons because it would feel brainless if everything functioned off the same button. But then why is Kaeshi Namikiri on the same button as Ogi Namikiri, if neither of them are on the same button as Ikishoten. But Mirage Jump is on the same button as Jump now, and Phantom Kamaitachi is on the same button as Bunshin. Actions you can only use if another action is on cooldown, that you literally functionally cannot fat finger accidentally, do not get added complexity from being on separate buttons as the skill activating them. But combos that can be used even if they aren't successfully executing the combo, being on different buttons, so that you can technically fat finger and fuck it up, is how it should be. There is a level of "skill" to pressing the right buttons on the keyboard or controller. But most of us with better than average hand eye coordination take it as granted so we forget said skill because we are above it. But it's still there which is why "fat fingering" should be an existing risk to the player always. But enough about that. The AoE changes? While the cone AoE's add flavor, it again doesn't feel like a case of skill expression. But I am a little sad they don't exist, because their tedium did not come from the shape. It came from the target requirement and inconsistency with other AoE's in the kits. Samurais one specifically, less so for warrior where you always have the control of the aggro anyway so the cone AoE basically always hits and works as you want. On Samurai, wanting to avoid the occasional cleave attacks from enemies if there is any, while wanting to hit the AoE's, which go from Cone > Circle > Cone > Circle > Cone > Repeat, always felt more like a chore than something fun to do. But that could all also easily be remedied by the removal of the targeted enemy factor. If a circle AoE doesn't need a target, why would the Cone one? Was it because of legacy movement style being hard to make work accurately if the aiming for the ability would solely work based off of your characters direction, or maybe the direction of the camera it would snap to? Or something else? I don't know. But that tedious back and forth with the forced target to even use it was definitely the issue I had with the Cone AoE's. But not enough for where I'd want them to be removed either. All in all what I guess I'm saying is, a lot of people to me, perceive sometimes redundant complexity that is a relic of an older game as something worthwhile, while I believe a full reset to said redundancy, and then developing it to be more complex, now with more meaning to it and with more experience would be the far more effective measure, and possibly their end goal to begin with. However only getting new skillsets every 2 years along with a level cap increase, or inconsistent rework timings definitely makes it tedious to wait for the change we all want. I'm hoping as we hit the 100's and look forward to our next expansion, we could be looking at not only more in-depth classes with a soft-specialization system, or otherwise improving on what we have again and increasing the skill ceiling again as the hopeful endgoal for both the devs and the players.

[@BenkaiDebussy]

I think that ideal skill design in a game should involve "a small number of skills that can be used in complex ways." The problem with FF14 skill complexity is that it just feels like "busy work"; there's basically always an obvious "correct solution" that just happens to vary sometimes if a boss is moving around or going into an invulnerability phase. More often than not, you always use (insert skill) in the exact same way; it's always used after a certain skill, or on cooldown, or when overlapping with raid buffs, etc. One thing I've wondered about is why MMOs don't seem to incorporate various new ideas that have appeared in single-player RPGs to keep things more "fresh." Bosses always just have HP bars that you decrease with damage, with different stats/skills just translating to damage numbers. But maybe you could have something like, for example, bosses that can guard, and different skills are better suited to dealing with that. Give bosses different "states" and give players skills that interact with those states in various ways. "The boss is doing ______ , so I should use ______ to deal with it," etc. There's a lot of interesting things that could be done!

[@Jackeh47]

funny thing is, xiv has had those things. just most of that design is from heavensward (eg. ravana had different states and could parry you, a5s-a8s all had very interesting design)

[@rob4290]

It feels so good to finally have someone recognize the players that don't care to do progression content but love maximizing their gameplay. I was a Heavensward tank and I felt so good pushing how long I could stay in DPS stance, handling aggro and health alongside my branching paladin rotation, and even playing around with the STR tank meta. Toward the end of it I finally started doing the entry level floors of savage and I loved it, but I didn't care to do the stuff that would require weeks of progression. I'm so bored now. I still don't want to do progression raiding where you pull for days on end, but the "normal" game is so mindless. Tanks who didn't want to maximize could just stay in tank stance, use their aggro combo over and over, and complete normal content just fine. Why take the interesting parts away from those of us who wanted more?

[@Ratched64]

this is what having Kaiten taken away does to a man, look what you have done Square Enix.

[@tommyjamdee8257]

As a guy who does ultimates, he's right lol. Normal content just feels like a chore at times because of how mind numbingly simple it can be. It has become hard for the game's combat to interest me outside savage and ultimate. Honestly I think its why a lot of savage people parse. At some point just clearing gets uninteresting also.

[@Gogito4]

It gets worse with how Ultimates have already slowed down to the crawl. So hardcore players get content once a year **if they are lucky**. How are you supposed to remain excited when you get to "play the game" once a year? This is especially problematic for healers where YoshiP literally told them "if you want to heal, go do ultimates".

[@tommyjamdee8257]

@@Gogito4 Idk if they can ever fix healers tbh. If healing is hard in normal content its gonna be impossible in hard content, and if healing is hard in hard content its gonna be easy is normal content. I don't think it can ever be interesting across the board.

[@Gogito4]

@@tommyjamdee8257 It's one thing to make healing only hard in hard content. But they made healing only hard in *1* fight in a year. This is an entire role that you basically are told you only get to have fun in once a year. Healing should be hard in Savage. Keep it easy in normal, hard and heck, even EXs, but people shouldn't be able to solo heal Savage basically imediately.

[@AetherStar]

@@Gogito4 you wouldn't be able to solo heal savage not because of just the heal checks but because of the mechanics. you probably wouldn't be able to clear P3S or P4S without 2 healers

[@Brian-rt5bb]

​@@tommyjamdee8257 I don't think that's true because what makes FFXIV healing so weird and easy is that there's no damage! It's absolutely weird coming to FFXIV from an MMO with more conventional healing because damage is tuned so low it's meta that all the healer classes are basically one button DPS classes with OGCD healing utility spells. This has nothing to do with what's possible, it's a specific weird design decision articulated by the devs that they don't want the raid to feel dependent on the skill of the healer to keep them alive. They deliberately de-emphasized healing as a role to make DPS players feel like they have more agency and make newbie healers feel less like they're letting everyone down, but this comes at expense of healers who just don't engage with their role very much and are just sort of there. It's really easy to imagine a version of FFXIV with no healers now, just give everyone OGCD/passive self-healing ablities and let a few classes rez, the game doesn't even really change much.

[@Elidan1012]

I hope good feedback like this is shared with the devs through official channels.

[@GameGod77]

The representation of virtue's last reward and AI the somnium files make me very happy x

[@hatchettwit]

I'm still working through msq, I was a lvl 50 ish summoner when it was revamped. I didn't like that my dot was gone, I didn't like that it suddenly felt like everything revolved around bahamut. Nothing wrong with that except I was still leveling and was suddenly confused what my rotation was. When I'd ask, it would be well summon bahamut, enkindle bahamut, and then summon your titans. I had the titans, but I couldn't use them without bahamut. That's a lvl 70 skill. It got better as I got higher level, but it felt like suddenly my class didn't start till way later. It was indeed less fun at the time than it previously had been. I'm at 70 now, I'm pressing more buttons but.. it still feels like it was more fun before.

[@Cody211282]

Seems the dev PLD player left before the rework.

[@SicilianFiraga]

On aggro management. You were expected to start off in aggro stance, aggro combo and then switch to dps unless you were a Warrior where you could stay dps. It never mattered, all that came out of the change is you don't have to hope a dps uses their threat decreasing abilities. That said, smaller bosses and proper placement of them is more fun to me. I will never miss the stances pre Shadowbringers though.

[@eavluxya4751]

You still had control as the tank. If DPS were too close, you'd monitor the aggro gauge, and there were times where I had to turn my stance back on for a moment to make sure I stayed in the lead. The responsibility ultimately fell to you, and I used to be proud of my ability to keep aggro.

[@SvarogAristaeusAllen]

@@eavluxya4751 I never felt pride in it, just frustration at jackass dps visibly trying to steal aggro from me every time I switched to DPS stance. They'd never get it, but I'd always feel a twinge of annoyance every time tank stance had to go back on so some idiot didn't get immediately gored by the mobs. I don't really miss stance dancing for that reason, I'd do it but I hated it because of other players, because those were the days when stealing aggro from the tank was a pride point for dps, because it was actually possible.

[@eavluxya4751]

@@SvarogAristaeusAllen I understand you feeling annoyance, but I didn't. I wasn't overly obsessed with my damage, and instead got my joy out of monitoring this. What to you was an annoyance, was satisfaction for me. And to clarify, I'm speaking of heavensward, where there was hardly any aggro utility outside of tanks, except for elusive jump, healer util, and ninja abilities. I agree that stormblood with diversion was annoying, and pushed aggro blame onto the DPS

[@SvarogAristaeusAllen]

@@eavluxya4751 Yeah, Stormblood was the expac I primarily tanked on. Even though I didn't run savage content, I still wanted to try to optimize my play and learn the way higher skilled players played the class, which meant spending most of your time in DPS stance for Warrior, but I couldn't go a single dungeon without people trying to rip aggro off me, which meant I couldn't really do that.

[@Turamwdd]

@@eavluxya4751 So, who to cater to now? The one that took priding in knowing when to stance dance or the one that found it uselessly annoying? Time to make a decision for the game. Which will have the least negative effect on the tanking player base?

[@C4MG1RL]

On the Samurai bit: if they changed Goken to a circle because people didn't like dipping in and out supposedly... Why didn't they also change Fuga? It's strange to say the least Honestly having all special AoE on samurai be a cone and the regular AoE being a circle would be better. Maybe make them all a cone? Honestly seems like it'd fit better that way if they were. Monk is your stand in the middle DPS Dragoon is your line DPS Samurai can be the cone DPS since they want to remove the jitters Reaper has the hybrid of dipping in and out like you're doing the hokey pokey after stealing SAM's crack supply Ninja has the hybrid of ranged options and a circle that people insist on using for bosses

[@epsilonnought6646]

Fuga becomes a circle aoe at level 86.

[@hb-mek]

everytime i see a ninja cast doton in a boss fight i lose a piece of my soul

[@C4MG1RL]

@@epsilonnought6646 yes which doesn't make sense with them changing Goken supposedly for not liking the in and out shimmy. You'd think they'd also make fuka a circle and just have fuga be an in general upgrade. It wouldn't be the first time a move has gotten an upgrade at a level and all that really changes is a new icon, animation, and more damage

[@tirell2075]

I'm glad that you mentioned job expression being changed. While I do like high skill ceilings, I usually just care about how a job feels and that has just happened to correlate with difficulty before, and the broad changes have pushed the jobs to feel much more similar to each other. I started playing in Stormblood, ended up maining DRK and SMN. SMN's identity was great, with DWT being tied to Aetherflow giving it a soft 1min cd, it has a nice flexibility to casting it for movement and made each different resource have a connection. I love DoTs too, and they've always been easy to maintain but I still liked the feel of Fester doing more damage when DoTs are active. They also tied Arcanist to Summoner, and it kinda made sense to me that if you're busy summoning you might pick spells that just work on their own. Bahamut as a capstone had an epic feeling, especially pairing it up with Garuda's Contagion, though Wyrmwave triggering on ogcds was a little bit silly. It had this feeling of a cool, pragmatic, research/intelligence driven caster using various advantages in one, an epic finisher to a rotation with some good built in flexibility, lots of little ticks of damage and a high APM caster option to contrast BLM's constantly active rotation with slow, heavy hitting casts. The visuals are great now but it feels empty having all that weaving space but far fewer OGCDs to throw around. DRK is my favourite tank for both aesthetic and how fun TBN feels, and a big part of that is how it's actually tied to his resources so I want to make sure it's available and that it breaks. It felt fast due to the haste from Blood Weapon and uptime the buff used to have, all of DRK's random ogcds felt part of a complete kit through either having a Dark Arts function or providing blood. The blood gauge didn't manage itself like it feels like it does now. The aesthetics are amazing but it's not a high APM tank anymore, GNB sort of took that. It feels that almost every job, regardless of how big the changes are, have been pushed into a similar gameplay with the burst windows that land on the 2 minute marker and away from DoT or secondary stat synergies. When I found out that DRK had parry cooldowns and parry resets in Heavensward I feel a bit sad about missing out, sounds like a great identity and synergy. Even DRG that you mentioned in the video has been slowly changed, BotD in HW sounds like a really fun concept being both a timer and a resource, but every expansion made it easier to manage. It feels like when they make changes that lower the skill floor they are also making it easier to swap between jobs, and kill the mechanical job expression in the process.

[@kos-mos1127]

The Summoner identity has been divisive since A Realm Reborn. Arcanist never should have transitioned into Summoner. The classic Final Fantasy Summoner has a variety of summoned monsters that they fight along with which is what End Walker Summoner is SE just shuffled their feet getting their causing this massive backlash. The main issue with Summoner is they fixed the issues in the worst possible way.

[@heulg.darian2536]

@KOS - MOS Except the reason its divisive is a retarded one. Arcanist transitioning into summoner and scholar is not only the best thing about arcanist but also a cornerstone of the ff14 world building. You fight summons and summoners throughout the whole story and learn how they work and how they worked. But no people wanted old summoners, except when you ask them none of them know what the summoner from their favorite franchise is besides the guy who summons something and then it goes away. EW summoner isn't summoning monsters that fight alongside him. the carbuncle does nothing the whole fight, the demis stop assisting instead they now do 4 attacks and an akh morn and they are gone, and primals are the worst offenders of doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HELPFULL, they are aoe drills they are a spell animation not a summon, you can do the same with a couple of tridisasters. Old smn was fighting with his summons, cause he had to in order to defend himself long enough to summon bahamut, who in turn when he appeared it made him the best dps in the game. The first thing you learn when you go into the game as arcanist is that you're not spamming spells you pick spells to achieve the best outcome, you strategize, stormblood had that, ew smn doesn't ew smn can be played by a macro and do more than decent in savage content. You guys didn't gain the real smn you killed him out of nostalgia.

[@tirell2075]

@@kos-mos1127 I both agree and disagree with the summoner identity, partially due to it being different to the classic Summoner playstyle in most games, partially due to what else Summoners could do or how summons were implemented, and partially due to each FF game having its own playstyles and lore, and that MMOs are fundamentally different to classic RPGs. Summons in early FF games were basically glorified spells, AoE attacks with a creature in the animation, but the awe often came from what those creatures would do in lore in cutscenes. FFIV is a great example of how they were tied into Rydia and unlocking the summons involved boss fights, but Rydia also had access to black magic for her entire screen time including Bio. The nature of turns, mana and lack of restrictions on spells or summons meant that you typically would just spam Rydia's most damaging ability though. I actually think that summons from these early games feel like a product of gameplay limitations. In FFVII and VIII they weren't tied to a specific character but equipped, in FFIX both characters that could summon were also White Mages and in FFX the summoner was a white mage in a system where you could progress her to any skill in the sphere grid, and this game also made the summons feel more like creatures thanks to their own attack lists and permanence. It also gave them a sense of grandeur due to replacing your party and being pretty strong early on. FFXII they had a feeling like a limit break, summoning them temporarily to blow up what's in front of you. Now, as a fan of DoT classes in MMOs and Warlock in WoW (magic pets tied to your power are my thing), I think that the initial iteration of Summoner made sense in the lore of FFXIV and it was enjoyable to explore. The Arcanist tradition layed the ground work to be a suitable mage to practise the ancient technique of summoning, it gave you spells to use while your summons also remained active, which I think DoTs are a great fit for. Their size made sense in an MMO trying to keep animations down low and not overshadow one job with another, though that's out the window as soon as HW hits. Mechanically it felt like a good summoner to me, it had the pet class thing of commanding your pet even during a hardcast rather than being a glorified ogcd, but it missed the grandeur of FF summons and lacked swapping them out, for sure. I think that the iteration in HW/SB had the perfect solution to that, DWT being tied to aetherflow kept the mechanics interconnected and allowed freedom in using it within that minute, DWT personally felt amazing and Deathflare is my favourite spell still with the animation being me casting this amazing laser and all. I like it more than Akh Morn because it's my character doing it, even. Bahamut was the perfect answer to the egi issue. Looks grand, responds to your commands but is a temporary power spike for other creatures to come out. I was actually not very happy with the ShB changes because Phoenix being the capstone, the end of the rotation and offering a stronger phase than Bahamut felt off, and they removed the connection between the different mechanics SMN had to use. Also they made me only able to Deathflare every 2 minutes instead of every 1, personal job flavour gripes and all. Endwalker's SMN looks amazing, and I love that the summons give us alterations to our abilities, but they still only come out to do one attack and leave and it moved even further away from the Arcanist flavour of using any advantage. Back to the mechanical differences between old FF RPGs and an MMO, a lot of other jobs don't quite match their previous iterations though they still feel good to people. BLM is a simple one, due to the spells working in a functional rotation to match the MMO style instead of them all having mostly the same effect so you spam the correct weakness. DRG is one that I have had gripes with because I love them in previous games. Jump isn't their hardest hitting attack due to being balanced as an OGCD, it doesn't dodge anything but makes them more vulnerable instead, DRG had this weird pseudo support feel with a bunch of buffs tacked on. I still think that Stardiver would be cooler as a GCD so its potency could be scaled up to match its effect. Still, Freya did have a variety of spells tied to her Dragoon class in FFIX and it's just this game's iteration of the class. This has dragged on for a simple point, so basically *TL;DR:* There's space in an MMO with GCDs instead of turns for Summoners to both summon their iconic creatures and weave DoTs into the mix.

[@kos-mos1127]

@@tirell2075 Summoner has a lot of misconceptions. Final Fantasy III, V and Tactics Summoner is job within a job system. Final Fantasy IV, IX and X Summoner is a job within the story. Take Final Fantasy IX Summoner has white magic with Eiko having stronger White Magic and weaker summons. Garnet had stronger summons and weaker white magic. In both cases Black Magic and White Magic were secondary. In Final Fantasy XIV Black Mage felt good because they accessed their power through Black Magic. Red Mage does not play like its RPG counterpart because it still accessed its power through Red Magic. Red Mage never impacted the story are the level of Summoner which is why so many players were complaining that the previous iteration of Summoner was not a Final Fantasy Summoner. A Warlock is a Summoner but a Summoner is not a Warlock. The DoT and Pet style of the Summoner did not work because it terrible as a Summoner. Summoner already has their own way of accessing their power through Summoning Magic. This allows Summoner to summon magic beasts to fight alongside them and evoke their power. End walker Summoner accomplishes this but in a backwards way. Instead of having arcanum primals build resources to summon Bahamut and Pheonix they have Bahamut and Phoenix unlock arcanums. They could have added granularity to the summons to capture the idea that the summons are the kit. The way Final Fantasy encounters are designed a Summoner with a granular design of a variety of pets works a lot better mechanically than a Warlock style pet job. The players just give the developers an easy way out by saying it won't work in an mmo.

[@kokayinewsome9308]

If they added Bane to SCH I would play it. But I need my limit break atks. But no one respect DPS but I love being a ninja. Smh

[@ernyoung8357]

Please continue making these longer (20+ min) videos if/when you find the inspiration to do so. I could listen to your voice all day - actually, I do that already. :>

[@penultimania4295]

Man i almost cried while watching this video. Ive been playing since 2.0, tank main but love to heal too. Savage and ultimate raider, quit the game for a long time in Stormblood after they obliterated aggro management and raid difficult but oooh boy...we didn't know how good we had it. The state of the game now for tanks and healers is just a dumpster fire. No aggro to manage. No damage to mitigate. No healing to do. Ive come back to the game in Endwalker because i love it and have a soft spot for it but have absolutely no motivation to even do ANY high level content and I used to easily parse oranges in HW and SB. Yes i know there are ultimates bla bla. But i also want to be challenged in regular content to a certain extent. Ultimates are 1% of the game. Most of the people I raided with back in the day are gone, or are around because like me they miss the game. HW had its flaws but was truly the golden era for this game. I just want my game back.

[@mrGlekkev]

I took alot of time in SHB to learn SMN in savage content and I loved it, it took time to learn the fight and keep your rotation going to optimize everything (like BLM but more mobile). EW SMN now is braindead, sure more people play the job now but I hate it, there is next to nothing to optimize with it and I have lost the job that I fell in love with. I to this day have not found a job that scratches my needs like SHB SMN did.

[@hugoaltaie9801]

Dude I started playing the game in shadowbringers and I'm a tank main... Dude hearing about the way things used to be is so excruciating. It's like a heaven or thing I can't have anymore, that I missed. Idk why they think everyone wants basically freaking skins for classes instead of unique jobs.

[@Aldianaux]

This is exactly how I have been feeling lately. I think that you are on with the Summoner comments as well.

[@NajxxTrebla]

rotating weeb sword removal send this man over the edge lmfao

[@Tachynon]

Great discussion. The thing that got me hooked to this game initially was cross-class skills. It was a brilliant feature. You could customise your job to a limited degree and that was fantastic and yet not overpowered. The constant "dumbing" down of jobs in every patch has been one of my biggest gripes. They are all starting to feel samey.

[@Xenosanta]

Cross class skills were interesting until you realize they're like talent trees in other games. You get a bunch of options but some were dps oriented and others were utility. Eventually players just picked the ones that did the most dps and best utility and everybody used that. We still have role abilities (which is similar) except you also don't have to pick and choose among what you want.

[@meuanglao7]

@@Xenosanta But you had to play the original class they were from in order to be able to use those abilities. That's what made it fun. They gave us a reason to play multiple classes instead of just one or two. And they allowed different builds back then, which I really liked. I'm personally more support-based than damage-based, I like providing utility. You have other people who want to do more damage, and they could focus that. I miss having different builds instead of everything being the same now

[@Xenosanta]

@@meuanglao7 I mean if you like playing support effects do Ranged Phys DPS (i.e. Dancer or Bard).

[@terrancenightingale1749]

"Why are you playing gunbreaker if it's too busy for you?" My guess is aesthetic. These players like the aesthetic of the job, but don't like how hard it is to play (for them) and don't want to be barred from playing the job they'd otherwise like by mechanics that they don't. I'm not saying this is a correct or wrong mindset. I don't play GNB except to level it and I don't care either way for the job aesthetic, so idk. But this is my guess.

[@RichRayheart]

I had forgotten about this vid, but saw another guy which is not the WOW dude reacting to it, so I closed that tab and came here to watch it thrice and leave a comment for extra interaction

[@SpiderJesus26]

Me who never has given a shit about savage or raiding in general: Make things more convoluted, it's fun.

[@bharbarawyrstwaemasyn8741]

Man, I miss HW AST even more now. Just reminds me how healing was exhilarating as a post HW Ast player. It was like freshly delving into elden ring for me. Pulling that one bole and the action of spreading it to the whole party as a clutch mitigation while ignoring the balance that's sitting in storage was such a power move and I loved it (jk I'd just let the dps die). I miss healers having distinct identities and mechanics. And most of all: I miss my cards and noct sect. why se. . . why?

[@ridleyroid9060]

The fact that miasma bio bane is no longer in the game in any way and especially not on scholar is just sad.

[@bharbarawyrstwaemasyn8741]

@@ridleyroid9060 Miasma was so much better than spamming that stupid art of war. They honestly should've kept scholar as a dot class.

[@bryonic7611]

Idk, I never felt like overpower being a cone was job identity, was happy when they changed it even tho I still tend to move to cast it.

[@Tyrbris]

If people are actually mad about Overpower not being a cone, then they're fucking stupid.